404 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



discoverer met it, which is accounted for by the danger to which 

 it is exposed being now much increased from the general introduction 

 of firearms among the Bechuanas." (A. Smith, 1849, text to pi. 19.) 

 Campbell (1822) records this species in Bechuanaland, and 

 Livingstone (1857) and Baines (1864) note it near Lake Ngami 

 (W. L. Sclater, 1900, vol. 1, p. 299). Selous (1881, pp. 725-726) 

 writes : 



Twenty years ago this animal seems to have been very plentiful in the 

 western half of Southern Africa; now, unless it is still to be found between 

 the Okavango and Cunene rivers, it must be almost extinct in that portion 

 of the country. And this is not to be wondered at when one reads the ac- 

 counts in Andersson's and Chapman's books of their shooting as many as 

 eight of these animals in one night as they were drinking at a small water-hole ; 

 for it must be remembered that these isolated water-holes, at the end of the 

 dry season, represented all the water to be found over an enormous extent 

 of country, and that therefore all the Rhinoceroses that in happier times 

 were distributed over many hundreds of square miles were in times of drought 

 dependent upon perhaps a single pool for their supply of water. In 1877, 

 during several months' hunting in the country to the south of Linyanti, 

 on the river Chobe, I only saw the spoor of two Square-mouthed Rhinoceroses, 

 though in 1874 I had found them fairly plentiful in the same district ; whilst 

 in 1879, during eight months spent in hunting on and between the Botletlie, 

 Mababe, Machabe, Sunta, and Upper Chobe rivers, I never even saw the 

 spoor of one of these animals, and all the bushmen that I met with said 

 they were finished. 



Elsewhere (in Bryden, 1899, pp. 53-54) Selous says: 



Between 1840 and 1850 all travellers who have left records of their journeys 

 report having found the white rhinoceros very abundant all over the country, 

 wherever there was water, to the north and west of the Limpopo between 

 Secheli's country and Lake Ngami. . . . 



C. J. Andersson also found these animals very numerous during his travels 

 between 1850 and 1854 in the country lying to the west and north-west of 

 Lake Ngami, and speaks of killing nearly sixty rhinoceroses of both species 

 during one season. . . . Yet, notwithstanding the great, and in many instances 

 it is to be feared unnecessary, slaughter of white rhinoceroses which has 

 taken place at the hands of Europeans, South Africa is such a vast country, 

 that in many districts these animals might still have been numerous had it 

 not been for the rapid spread of firearms amongst the native tribes, who have 

 carried the war against these easily-killed beasts into their remotest retreats. 



One of these animals reported along the Mababi River in 1884 was 

 "the last rhinoceros that I ever heard of in any part of Western 

 South Africa" (Selous, in Bryden, 1899, p. 55). 



Southern Rhodesia. Of this rhino in Southern Rhodesia, Selous 

 (in Bryden, 1899, pp. 54-58) writes: 



At the date of my first visit to South Africa, in 1871, . . . these animals 

 were still numerous in the uninhabited districts of Matabeleland [and] 

 Mashunaland. [In 1872 many were met with northwest of Buluwayo.] Be- 

 tween the Gwelo and Umniati Rivers, I saw white rhinoceroses almost daily, 

 and sometimes as many as six or eight in one day. In 1873 I ... found 



